


We're Burning Red

by requiems



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Art student haru, M/M, rin checks out haru and his purchases
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 17:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4573023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/requiems/pseuds/requiems
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He paints and his clear blue waters have streaks of red in them. Rin’s name sits on his tongue, almost seems to have made a home there, and Haru remembers his sharp smile. He can’t help but think that his waters must be infested with sharks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Burning Red

Haru walks into the shop and the first thing he hears is laughter. 

The first thing he sees is red.

He wants to walk right back out.

The person at the register smiles at him, calls out a welcome, and Haru knows he’s the source. Of the laughter, of the red that is flooding his vision, of Haru wanting to leave right now. Instead he walks into the paint aisle, looks for the blue he came in for, and ignores the traces of pink that seem to linger throughout the store.

He pulls the paint he needs off the shelf and heads to the register, eager to leave. To get away from the pinks and the reds and the way his fingers twitch, as if telling himself they want to paint something new, _someone_ new.

When he hears the same welcome and sees the same red, Haru feels his lips tug down, feels his eyes narrow, and he pulls back as if he can’t allow himself too close. He watches the hands scan the tubes of paint before they stop, sudden and unexpected.

“Sorry, I just need to do a price check on this one,” the voice says, and Haru nods.

It’s the same as all the other ones, he knows this, but he can’t get himself to say it — his attention is on the way the red is spreading to the stranger’s ears. He wonders if he dyes his hair, if it’s just residue. 

He wonders why he cares. 

When the boy, man, mass of red, looks up again, Haru looks away, focuses on the way the hair curves at his neck.

“You paint?”

Haru nods.

“A student?”

Another nod.

“Me too.”

Haru really just wants to leave. Doesn’t want to associate red with a look, with a sound, with someone who will always be a stranger. He doesn’t nod this time, just stares at him and wonders what name he’d give the red painting his cheeks right now. Haru hopes he takes the hint.

He doesn’t.

“Do you paint people?”

No. He used to. He’s drawn Makoto a few times, always scribbles in the margins of his notebook, painted him for a project once. But most of his people have no faces and no colours. Most of his people are secondary to the oceans he paints.

No, he means to say. “Are you offering?” is what spills out.

The shade of red he sees next makes up for it.

  
  


He paints because he’s good at it. It’s what he says when people ask, when the questions of “Why art?” come up. Makoto doesn’t believe him. Haru doesn’t really believe himself either.

It’s when he’s sitting at his easel mixing paints that he finds it. 

A name tag. 

Matsuoka Rin.

Haru stares at it, tries to make sense of it. He traces the name with his fingers, tastes it on his tongue. He takes his brush and covers his canvas with the name, ignoring the voice telling him that this name is not meant for blue, for the soft strokes he’s given it.

“Rin,” Haru mumbles, and now that the name is out there it feels like he can never forget it.

When he lifts his brush again it’s to trace the outline of a face. His hands won’t move how he wants them to, though; they’re stilted, hesitant. They don’t swim across the canvas, don’t give him the freedom that his art always does. 

Red has spilled between his fingers, has dug itself into the spaces between them, and Haru wonders why the weight of it drags him down. It feels like there are hundreds, thousands of threads tied to his fingers, forming ribbons that decorate them like a gift. He wonders who the gift is for. 

Paint is easy to wash away but this, the colour of his blush, the red of his hair, has dug itself beneath his nails, and he finds that the more he scrubs, the deeper the red gets. 

This must be a joke. 

He can’t paint today.

  
  


When he can draw (minutes, hours, days later) it’s all of one face. He paints and his clear blue waters have streaks of red in them. Rin’s name sits on his tongue, almost seems to have made a home there, and Haru remembers his sharp smile. He can’t help but think that his waters must be infested with sharks.

  
  


Six days later Haru finds himself back at the shop, name tag in hand, an eagerness in his eyes that seems foreign. Today the red will be gone. Today the ribbons will unravel. He watches Rin help an older woman, smile on his face and his hand in hers. His ears are red, the colour of cherries, and whatever the woman is saying isn’t making it any better. She wishes Rin good luck, and then she turns around, looks Haru up and down before giving Rin a thumbs up. Haru watches her leave.

“I found this in my bag,” Haru says, ignores the way a smile slips itself onto Rin’s lips.

Rin doesn’t move and Haru wonders if he heard him. Maybe he needs to speak louder to be heard over the loudness of Rin’s entire being. He stares instead. When Rin’s gaze lowers to the counter, to the name tag in his hands, Haru’s eyes follow. 

He wants to ask if Rin can see the ribbons too. Instead he asks, “This is yours, right?”

A smile, bright, too bright, blossoms on Rin’s face. 

Haru wants to look away. 

“It is. Thanks a bunch!” Rin answers and does nothing. He doesn’t reach for the name tag like Haru expects him to, just smiles at him, too bright, too wide for just a returned name tag. The ribbons seem to tighten around his fingers.

“I’m Matsuoka Rin, by the way. In case you needed to know. If you were wondering,” he adds. Keeps adding, and Haru watches as the red travels from Rin’s ears to his cheeks. 

Haru looks down at the name tag still sitting in his hand, then back up at Rin. He holds it up, maybe Rin just hadn’t seen it. He doubts it. “I know.”

Rin stares at him, eyes widening, before he laughs and Haru wonders what he finds so funny about this. There is relief too, lodged in a small corner that he doesn’t like to think about, that Rin isn’t upset. For now though, he just wants him to take the name tag so that he can be free again, so that he doesn’t have to think about sharp smiles and eyes that burn red.

“So,” Haru hears, but he can’t look up, his eyes trained on the way Rin’s fingers bleed red into his own when he finally takes back his name tag. “What’s your name?”

The ribbons unravel.

  
  


Every Wednesday, like clockwork, Haru will return to the store. Rin will welcome him and Haru will ignore him, will head straight to the paint and pretend that this is what he’s here for. He’s reading the labels again, his fingers dancing from one item to the next when he catches red from the corner of his eye.

“You’ve been buying a lot of red lately, Haru,” Rin says, grabbing the paint from his hand and squinting at the small text. “You painting something terrifying?”

Haru thinks about the half-finished painting of Rin sitting on his canvas. Thinks about how he doesn’t need more paint, he just wanted to see him. Thinks about how his fingers aren’t made to draw people, but he’s taught them to. He looks at him and thinks about how he’s given a name to every shade of red that Rin has shown him.

_Yes,_ he thinks, _you_.

Instead he finds himself tugging at his pinky, wondering why only this thread seems determined not to leave. He wants to know if Rin can feel it too, wants to know if it is Rin that has tied it there or if it was his own doing.

“Haru.”

“ _Haru._ ”

When he looks up, Rin is in front of him, worry etched on his features, his fingers curved into Haru’s elbow. He’s too close, too much, and Haru wonders if he can see the cracks in his frown. He pulls back and feels Rin’s fingers slip from his elbow. This time he’s too scared to look down and see if the red has left a mark.

“Something like that,” he answers, his voice almost cracking, and goes to find all the blue paint he can.

When he leaves, it’s with eight different shades of red, all discovered today. Rin doesn’t say anything about the lack of blue.

  
  


Haru has too much red paint. Red for Rin’s hair, red for Rin’s eyes, red for the way Rin’s face burns when Haru catches him looking. The colour finds its way into all his work now. He mixes his paints and thinks Rin is bright and loud and almost overwhelming, but he leaves a trace of pink the colour of cherry blossoms behind. 

Haru wonders what his self portrait would look like now. If he’ll find traces of red in his blues and blacks. 

  
  


Today is Tuesday but he looks up and sees Rin, hears Rin’s laughter. It’s come a day early and Haru finds himself standing and staring before he remembers his routine. He goes home straight after class on Tuesdays. He sees Rin on Wednesdays. His legs move him forward again but a voice has him stopping.

“Haru?” 

Haru looks up and the surprise on Rin’s face softens into a grin. When his legs move him forward this time it’s towards the voice. 

His legs are terrible traitors.

Rin may be reds but the boy beside him is blacks and teal, his stare like an anchor chaining Haru’s feet down. Haru stares back and he wonders what it is swirling in those eyes; it’s dark and heavy, a secret, he decides. He wonders if Rin knows.

Rin, whose hand is still up in a wave. Rin, who is carrying two bags instead of one. Rin, whose grin grows wider, toothier, the closer Haru gets.

It isn’t Rin’s voice, though, that he hears when he’s standing in front of him.

“You must be Haru.” He has to look up to meet the other’s eyes. “The one with the pretty hair and eyes as clear as —”

Haru furrows his brows, wonders why he stopped. He gets his answer in the form of a kick, and follows the line of Rin’s leg up to his face, redder than Haru has ever seen it. Oh.

“What else has he said?” Haru asks, eyes trained on Rin’s face, trying to figure out a name for this shade of red.

The boy ( _giant_ , Haru thinks) laughs, letting go of Rin’s leg so he can ruffle his hair instead. 

“Hold on, I have a list.”

“No you don’t, Sousuke, shut up!”

“I do. I now know twenty-three things about one Nanase Haruka.”

Rin groans, looks at Haru for help. Haru isn’t sure what he’s expecting, so he just stares back. 

“Oh,” is the only thing Haru can think to say, and the way Sousuke laughs and Rin groans makes his lips twitch up into a smile.

Sousuke grabs the second bag Rin is carrying, telling him not to worry, his shoulder is fine now, and Haru tries to memorize the small smile that plays on Rin’s lips when Sousuke tells him he’s going to nap. When he steps towards Haru he stops, eyes bright, and leans down to loudly whisper in his ear:

“He said you have a nice voice too,” before he runs off, laughing.

The look on Rin’s face is priceless. So is the way his voice cracks as he yells after Sousuke.

Haru wishes he carried his phone around more often.

His eyes have traced down to the slope of Rin’s nose when he feels Rin tugging at his wrist. He looks down and sees fingers loosely wrapped around his wrist, feels the heat radiating from Rin’s palm.

“Watch me practice,” Rin says.

  
  


The pool is empty except for the the two of them. He’s sitting at the edge of the pool, pant legs rolled up, and feet in the water. The sound of the water splashing is soothing, sets a rhythm for the way his pencil covers the pages of his sketchbook with drawings. Haru draws the starting block, the way Rin’s toes curl at the edge. He draws the movement of the water as it clears a path for Rin to swim through. 

Haru doesn’t think about how he’s seen Rin four times this week.

Haru doesn’t think about why his hands have stopped moving, either. He knows why. He looks down at his sketchbook, draws five rings on the starting block, so he can forget.

But then he feels a tug on his leg and the illusion is broken.

“Swim with me,” Rin says, smile wide and eyes sparkling.

Haru feels like he’s never moved this fast in his life. He drops his sketchbook and pulls himself up, hands gripping his shirt to pull it over his head. And Haru has always found avoiding eye contact easy but he can’t let go of Rin’s gaze until Rin does it for him, his eyes travelling from Haru’s face to the smooth muscle of his stomach. Haru feels like he can finally breath again.

His hands move to unbuckle his belt when he hears something loud and high-pitched and then Rin’s fingers are suddenly holding his arm still.

“You can’t just get naked here,” Rin whispers, and Haru wants to ask why this is a secret.

Rin’s face is red but he can’t help the way his eyes trail down from Haru’s stomach, down, down. Down to a pair of jammers.

“It’s an old habit,” Haru tells him, and ignores the obvious question in Rin’s eyes. He pulls his pants off and walks past Rin, eager to sink back in. Eager for this peace, this calm, this escape.

He dives in and wonders if the water was always this bright. 

  
  


“What’s your favourite colour?”

“Right now?” Rin’s eyes find Haru’s and stay there. “Blue.”

Haru waits for the red to paint Rin’s cheeks in broad strokes. It doesn’t come.

He wonders why his cheeks burn instead.

  
  


“Go for it!” is what Nagisa yells, eyes bright and arms waving around. Haru watches Rei expertly dodge the flailing limb and finish balancing his equation.

Haru isn’t sure what “it” is. 

Makoto’s answer is a smile.

Rei explains its grammatical function.

Haru turns back to his painting, back to staring at the canvas covered in blues. He wonders what Rin loves about this. He wonders when his clear blue waters and skies stopped being enough. When his brush touches the canvas next, it’s a streak of pink that it leaves behind. A petal disturbing the water’s calm surface.

“Haru-chan!” Nagisa drapes himself across Haru’s back, his finger pointing to the pink. “That’s what it is.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Haru stares at the petal, paints the ripples on the water’s surface. He finds himself wondering if the colours in Rin’s world have become a little more blue.

  
  


It’s Friday and it’s the first time Haru has seen Rin this week. 

“You didn’t show up on Wednesday,” Rin says. 

He didn’t. He went home straight after class instead, painted trees that shouldn’t be in bloom yet. When he looks up Rin is staring at him, lips tugged down in a frown. Haru wonders if it’s the lighting in the locker room or if Rin’s eyes are a shade dimmer.

“Why blue?” he asks instead.

“What?”

“Your favourite colour.”

There’s a shade of red that Haru has never seen on Rin’s face before. It’s one he wants to keep to himself. His hand lifts to touch Rin’s cheek, thumb dragging along the line of his cheekbone. When he pulls it back he finds himself disappointed that the colour hasn’t stained his fingers. 

“Haru, what do you think you’re —” 

Rin’s words die in his throat and Haru wonders if that shade of red is even healthy anymore. Haru’s face is only centimeters away, too close to look at Rin properly but he finds he doesn’t really mind right now.

“Your face is really red right now. I wonder what name I’d give it.”

Rin’s forehead smacks against his own. Maybe being too close was a bad idea.

“That hurt,” Rin groans, leaning back against the lockers, hand rubbing at his forehead.

“It was your fault.”

“What.”

“Your fault.”

The way Rin’s eye is twitching is probably a bad thing. Makoto said this was supposed to end in smiles. Haru has never been the best with words anyways.

“How about,” Rin starts, fingers wrapping around the string of Haru’s hoodie, “‘I’m Haru and I need to get a clue’ red?”

Haru furrows his brows. “Your naming sense is terrible, Rin. I was thinking ‘I have a crush’ red”.

He feels himself being tugged forward seconds later, Rin’s fingers tightening around the string. He didn’t know your fingers could blush too. The awkward laughter that bubbles from Rin’s throat has him looking up. _I must have said something wrong._ Rin isn’t supposed to look scared, the red isn’t supposed to be chased away. An apology. He should apologize and leave. He doesn’t need the reds and the pinks and the light in the water as long as Rin can keep them.

Haru’s mouth has been staging a rebellion since he first caught a glimpse of that red.

“I wasn’t talking about you,” he blurts out instead, and feels almost weightless as the words fall out. This, he realizes, is what it meant. This is what the pages and pages of Rin’s face meant. This is what that tug at his pinky meant.

The smile on Rin’s face is what Haru wants to fill the rest of his sketchbooks with. 

Rin rubs the back of neck, slides down the locker to sit relaxed on the locker room floor. “So I wasn’t being obvious,” he sighs, relieved. “Stupid Sousuke.”

Haru wants to tell him that he probably was being obvious. Or maybe he was the one being obvious. He pulls out his sketchbook instead, sits across from Rin and calls his name.

“Let me draw you.”

“Me too.”

Haru’s hands stop moving. “I only have one pencil.”

Rin’s laughter is bright and loud. Haru thinks if it had a colour it would be his favourite. He wants to draw it. The way Rin’s eyes are shut, his head thrown back. The way his chest heaves with his laughter. His hand won’t move though, and when he looks up he sees Rin in front of him, eyes watering from his laughter. Rin’s gaze flickers down to the sketchbook in Haru’s lap before dragging up his chest to his face, laughter still in his eyes when he leans in close.

“I meant a crush, Haru.” 

Oh. Haru nods, breath caught in this throat. 

“Okay.”

Rin snorts, pulls back and narrows his eyes. Haru wonders why his ears are red.

“Haru, you were supposed to, you know, kiss me then.”

Haru didn’t know. “Makoto said to draw you before I kiss you,” he answers.

He watches Rin’s eyes widen before he’s laughing again, pulling away and scooting back so he’s across from him again. “Ah, the artist’s mind is a mysterious thing.” Rin waves his arms around, nodding like he’s learned something new. 

He peeks an eye open, “Try not to take so long.”

Haru doesn’t answer, just puts pencil to paper again and tries to concentrate on the curve of Rin’s lips instead of the sound of his laughter. The slope of his neck, instead of the heat of his breath. He finds it impossible. Rin has his eyes shut, his fingers dancing on his thighs, and Haru thinks he’s already drawn Rin in his mind hundreds of times since the day started.

“Rin.”

Rin hums, keeps his eyes shut, but his teeth sink into his bottom lip, his cheeks dust themselves red.

Haru leans forward, lets his fingers slip into Rin’s hair, fits his lips against his. He wonders if red will spill through his fingers again. Hopes the colour will live on his lips. When they pull apart, Rin laces their fingers together and Haru looks down, feels the thread around his fingers tighten.

“Haru, you’re like, five different shades of ‘I have a crush’ red right now.” Rin grins, presses his forehead against Haru’s.

“Probably,” Haru admits. “I think my face is burning.”

When Rin laughs this time, Haru sees a hint of blue.

He kisses him as thanks.

**Author's Note:**

> Ignoring that one fic I wrote about ten years ago, I guess this is my first published fic. I came up with this whole AU maybe a year ago? and have kept kind of adding to it here and there, so I thought why not try to turn at least one of my wordy headcanons into a fic! This is for everyone on tl who is always yelling at me to stop, and really all thanks to Mic who edited this mess :'')


End file.
